Chương 127: When Arrows Turn to Dust (3/3)

Shi Yan lowered his left hand to his waist, the motion deliberate and unhurried despite the bone-deep vibration still thrumming through the muddy ground beneath his boots. With a swift mental command, the bio-locked spatial pouch recognized his vascular pulse and body heat—the faint warmth of living flesh pressed against enchanted leather—directly translating his intent into spatial expansion. The pouch's mouth yawned open soundlessly, a pocket of folded reality responding to his will alone.

He didn't draw the heavy saber yet. Instead, his scarred fingers withdrew three more of the captured Cloud-Mirror jian swords, clutching them by their silver-tasseled hilts. The moisture-heavy air clung to the tassels immediately, weighing down the delicate silk threads until they hung limp and sodden against his knuckles. Each hilt was cold to the touch, slick with condensation, the metal almost biting against his calloused palm.

In his right hand, he produced a small, perfectly sealed jade vial containing the highly volatile, bioluminescent Grave-Rot toxin he had harvested days prior and carefully preserved. Even through the thick jade walls, a sickly greenish luminescence pulsed faintly, casting an eerie glow across his frost-rimed gauntlet and the edges of his Yaksha mask. The vial was no larger than his thumb, yet it felt unnaturally warm against his skin—a fevered heat that seemed to writhe and pulse with malevolent life.

In the distance, the thick gray fog churned violently. The unnatural sluggishness that had defined its movement shattered in an instant. Great sweeping currents of mist twisted and coiled like serpents recoiling from flame, parting with audible hisses as displaced moisture condensed into fat droplets that pattered against pine bark and leaf litter.

BOOM.

A colossal figure burst forth from the mist, and the very earth seemed to recoil beneath its weight. The Iron-Spined Ape was an abomination of nature, easily as large as a military siege wagon—a mountain of corded muscle and bone that defied rational scale. Its thick, matted fur was clotted black with dried mud and the blood of previous victims, the crimson stains dried to rust-brown crusts that cracked and flaked with every heaving breath.

The stench hit immediately: a choking miasma of rotting meat, sulfurous bile, and something far worse—the sweet, cloying reek of necrotic tissue left to fester in stagnant water.

Great, jagged plates of hardened bone jutted from its spine and forearms, each one exuding a foul, dark-purple Yin-Qi that caused the surrounding vegetation to wither and blacken upon contact. Where its massive knuckles brushed against moss-covered roots, the green growth turned brittle and gray within seconds, crumbling to ash that drifted away on the cold wind.

The bone plates themselves were grotesque—irregular, porous surfaces like calcified tumors, veined with pulsing violet light that throbbed in rhythm with the creature's thundering heartbeat.

What a nasty creature, Shi Yan thought, eyes narrowing behind his mask as he watched the moss shrivel beneath the beast's feet. Each footfall left behind a scorched impression in the earth, the soil itself turned black and lifeless as though burned by invisible fire. That Yin-Qi isn't just cold—it rots whatever it touches. Even with a fifty-five Physique, I can't afford to let it brush my skin. One mistake and I'm crippled. No grappling. No close entanglement.

"RAAAARGH!" It pounded its armored chest with fists like falling boulders, the impacts producing deep, resonant booms that echoed off the packed pine trunks and rolled through the valley like distant thunder. The beast let loose a deafening roar that expelled a shockwave of foul breath—hot, putrid air reeking of half-digested carrion—shaking the heavy pine needles from the canopy overhead.

They rained down in a rustling cascade, pattering against Shi Yan's shoulders and mask, sticking to the frost that had formed along the Yaksha's carved edges.

"Grrrrrr…" Its massive, crimson eyes—each one the size of a man's fist, shot through with black veins that writhed like living worms—locked dead onto Shi Yan's masked face without hesitation. Saliva dripped from its iron-dark fangs in thick, ropy strands, hissing faintly where it struck the corrupted earth and bubbled like acid.

It didn't just track the noise, Shi Yan calculated rapidly, observing the beast's flared nostrils—wide, ragged openings that huffed out plumes of gray vapor with every breath. The nostrils twitched and flexed, sampling the air with predatory precision. I intentionally broke noise discipline to pull it, but its targeting feels too perfect. It likely possesses thermal and Yin-resonance receptors. It felt the kinetic displacement of moisture in the air when I stomped the ground. A multi-sensory predator.

Lethal, but highly predictable.

Then, dropping onto all fours with a wet, meaty thud that sent up sprays of muddy water, it charged down the muddy trail toward Shi Yan, tearing up massive chunks of earth with every bounding stride. Each impact of its knuckles drove furrows a foot deep into the ground, exposing pale roots that snapped like brittle bones beneath its weight.

The beast's gait was deceptively fluid for something so massive—shoulders rolling, spine flexing with animalistic grace—yet every movement carried the promise of obliterating force.

Shi Yan's eyes remained calm behind the mask's hollow sockets, his breathing controlled and rhythmic despite the adrenaline beginning to sharpen his senses. His mind calculated its velocity, its center of mass, and the rhythm of its gait with cold precision, cataloging every detail like a targeting computer processing battlefield data.

Eighty meters. Closing at twenty-two meters per second.

When the beast crossed the fifty-meter threshold—marked by a lightning-scarred pine that Shi Yan had already registered as a reference point—he moved. He whipped his left arm forward in a rapid blur, the motion so swift that the silver tassels snapped taut with audible cracks.

Driven by his base [55 Might], the three Cloud-Mirror swords did not fly like elegant weapons of the Dao; they fired like crossbow bolts, tearing through the mist with a sharp, hissing shriek. The displaced fog curled away from their passage in spiraling vortices, and the air itself seemed to scream as the blades cut through moisture-laden atmosphere at inhuman velocities. They left visible trails—faint distortions in the gray light—as they hurtled toward their target.

But of course, Shi Yan was not an arrogant fool expecting a miracle. His expression remained flat, mechanical, utterly devoid of hope or fear. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

The first sword struck the Ape's leading right shoulder with a sound like a blacksmith's hammer striking an anvil. Instead of sinking deep into the flesh, the steel met the dense, purple-glowing Yin-bone plating with violent, instantaneous resistance. With a sharp, ringing detonation that sent up a spray of violet sparks, the silver-tasseled jian shattered into a dozen useless fragments, pinging off the beast's armor like gravel against a tank's hull.

The broken shards tumbled end-over-end through the air before embedding themselves uselessly in the mud and pine bark. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The second and third swords met the same fate in rapid succession—metallic shrieks punctuating the beast's thunderous approach—snapping against the beast's chest and thigh plating with bone-jarring impacts that did nothing to slow its momentum. The collisions sent hairline fractures spider-webbing across the steel before the blades exploded into glittering fragments, showering the mud with broken steel that steamed faintly in the cold air.

The Iron-Spined Ape did not even flinch, its momentum completely uninterrupted, crimson eyes burning with savage glee.

"Hrraah—" The roar broke into a rough, ugly chuckle—a sound like grinding stone mixed with a beast's triumphant bellow. The creature bared its iron-dark fangs in what could only be described as a grin, strands of saliva stretching between yellowed canines.

Diagnostic confirmed, Shi Yan thought, ignoring the mocking roar entirely. His breathing remained flat and rhythmic, each exhale emerging as thick white vapor that curled upward past the edges of his mask. His fingers moved with practiced efficiency as he holstered the Grave-Rot vial back into his pouch for the moment, the jade's sickly glow disappearing into folded space. The tensile strength of Tier-2 Yin-bone firmly exceeds mid or perhaps low grade steel.

Bringing my primary payload into extreme close-quarters combat against untested reactive armor is an unacceptable risk. Calibrating secondary parameters.

He stood before a Furnace-Core entity—a creature that should, by all rights, require a full Qi-Gathering cultivator or an entire mortal battalion to bring down—and his heavy saber, his only true means of executing the creature, was a massive drain on his stamina. The weight alone demanded perfect technique, and every swing would tax muscles already operating near their physiological limits.

Not to mention the [Sieve Effect] from using his [Black-Iron Body Art] would burn his physiological fuel within three minutes. The mental timer was already ticking in the back of his mind, an invisible countdown to metabolic collapse. His enhanced physique was a double-edged blade—immense power paid for in accelerated resource consumption.

Furthermore, swinging a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound piece of iron required absolute commitment. If he misjudged the beast's durability, if the saber bounced or got lodged in overlapping bone plates, he would be left utterly defenseless with a spiked cardiovascular rate and arms trembling from over-exertion—easy prey for those crushing fists.

Thus, without a single wasted motion, Shi Yan's hand dipped back into the void of the spatial pouch. The familiar sensation of reaching into folded space—cool nothingness pressing against his knuckles—gave way to solid reality as his fingers closed around reinforced wood and horn. He withdrew the massive, unstrung recurve bow he had purchased from the blacksmith—a weapon so large and stiff it required a draw weight of four hundred pounds.

The limbs were as thick as a man's forearm, constructed from layers of ironwood, horn, and sinew bound with wire-wrapped leather. Traditionally, it was mounted on fortress walls for two men to winch via gears, a siege weapon meant to punch through cavalry armor at three hundred paces.

Because of its kinetic yield and flat trajectory, Shi Yan regarded it as the battlefield equivalent of a heavy sniper rifle—a precision instrument of overwhelming force.

He stepped through the bow with mechanical efficiency, planting his boot against the lower limb while gripping the upper. Using his [55 Physique], he effortlessly bent the reinforced ironwood and horn, the materials groaning in protest as they were forced into an arc they were never meant to achieve under one man's strength alone. With a sharp, meaty snap, he hooked the thick bowstring into place in a fraction of a second, the braided cord humming with sudden tension.

He also pulled a quiver of standard, crudely fletched iron-tipped infantry arrows from the pouch—cheap ammunition, mass-produced in some sect's mortal auxiliary workshops. The shafts were rough, the fletching uneven, the balance poor. He hadn't purchased specialized armor-piercing shafts or Qi-conductive ammunition; these were cheap, mass-produced mortal arrows, entirely unsuited for a weapon of this caliber. But they were what he had.

Forty meters. He took a deep breath, cold air flooding his lungs and burning faintly in his chest. His eyes narrowed behind the mask, focusing with absolute clarity on the charging colossus.

Shi Yan anchored his boots into the mud, the heavy armored soles driving down through the slick surface until they found purchase on the harder bedrock beneath. His weight dropped low, knees bent, core engaged—a shooter's stance refined through countless engagements. He did not possess Qi to thread into the bowstring, but with fifty-five points of raw physical might, he simply forced the weapon beyond its intended draw weight, muscles coiling and bunching beneath his sleeves as he drew with mechanical precision.

The ironwood groaned in warning, bowing backward with visible strain as Shi Yan pulled the string to his ear—the anchor point burned into muscle memory from another lifetime. Stress fractures appeared as faint white lines along the limbs, and the entire frame creaked ominously, threatening to explode into splinters. The cheap wooden shaft of the standard arrow warped precariously under the tension, the grain of the wood protesting with tiny, hairline splits.

He aimed dead for the Ape's wide, roaring mouth—that gaping maw filled with fangs and stinking breath.

He released. Thwack.

The bowstring snapped forward with a sound like a cracking whip, and the arrow vanished into a blur of motion. The recoil vibrated through the weapon's frame, rattling Shi Yan's bones from fingertips to shoulders.

With mechanical efficiency, his strength allowed him to cycle the fortress-grade weapon as if it were a standard light bow. His hands moved in a blur—nock, draw, anchor, release—each motion flowing into the next without pause. He instantly nocked another ordinary arrow. Thwack. The string sang again, and another shaft disappeared into the gray air. And another. Thwack. The rhythm was relentless, each shot fired with the precision of an automated weapon.

Three standard iron-tipped missiles sliced through the rain at high velocity, their passage marked by high-pitched whistles and visible ripples in the moisture-heavy air. They converged on their target with lethal intent, aiming for the eyes and throat—soft targets, vulnerable points where even crude ammunition might find purchase.

Seeing the incoming projectiles, the Iron-Spined Ape did not merely rely on its physical bulk. Some primal instinct—honed through centuries of survival in this brutal cultivation world—triggered an immediate defensive response.

"GROOOAAAH!" The beast roared, and the jagged spines along its back suddenly flared with blinding violet light—so intense that Shi Yan's vision whited out momentarily even behind the mask's eye-slits. The purple glow pulsed outward in concentric rings, casting stark shadows that danced wildly across the fog-shrouded pines.

Before Shi Yan's eyes, in a display of true Furnace-Core power—the kind of overwhelming spiritual might that separated beasts from mortals—the creature manipulated the ambient Heaven and Earth Qi with instinctive mastery. A shockwave of pure, condensed Yin-frost erupted from its body, radiating outward in a hemisphere of crystalline death. The temperature plummeted instantly, frost riming every surface within ten meters as moisture froze mid-air.

The barrier formed just inches from the beast's face—a swirling, semi-transparent vortex of frozen mist that glittered like shattered diamonds, dense enough to distort the air behind it.

The three crude arrows slammed into the Yin-shield with successive impacts that produced sharp, crystalline cracks. The overwhelming kinetic force of the four-hundred-pound draw pushed them halfway through the frost barrier, their tips penetrating several inches as the spiritual energy resisted with tangible, physical weight. For a heartbeat, they hung suspended—trembling violently as momentum fought against Dao-reinforced defense.

But the ammunition was simply too weak. The ordinary iron and wood lacked any spiritual reinforcement to withstand the Dao's corrosive touch. The extreme drop in temperature—cold enough to turn blood to ice in seconds—instantly chilled the mundane metal until it became brittle as glass, and warped the wooden shafts until they bowed and twisted grotesquely. Frost spread across their surfaces in branching patterns, and the wood split along its grain with audible pops.

With a series of sharp cracks like shattering glass, all three standard arrows exploded into frozen dust before they could even scratch the beast's corneas. The fragments glittered briefly as they scattered across the churning fog—a thousand tiny shards catching the gray light—before dissolving into nothingness.

Shi Yan's expression darkened behind the mask, jaw tightening fractionally. Target possesses localized barrier-projection. Cast time is approximately half a second. He casually discarded the massive recurve bow entirely, opening his grip and letting it fall without ceremony.

It clattered uselessly into the mud with a wet, heavy thud, the expensive weapon already forgotten. Ranged ballistics utilizing sub-standard ammunition are entirely negated by atmospheric Qi interference. Upgrading to close-quarters penetration.

Meanwhile, from her concealed position on the ridge above, Ye Bing watched the sequence unfold with narrowed eyes, her cold, beautiful features—all sharp cheekbones and pale skin pulled taut over elegant bone structure—marred by deep bewilderment.